"Ode of falling through"

On facing the monstrous through the fear,

The sun burns away all dross.

The profound shadowless blackness,

The blindingly brilliant diamond sphere,

Give way to the marvelous beholding of “This!”

The eyebrows flutter, the eyes blink.

Turning the Light Around

In Zen, the most important function of consciousness is "to turn the light around," also known as "to turn yourself about" or "to take the backward step" (Sanskrit paravrtti).  But because of the very bifurcation function of our underlying “sub”-consciousness (the manas level of consciousness) that enables us to have self-consciousness,  we immediately make a mistake about this pointing out of what we must do if we want to comprehend our nature, our great meaning in life. That mistake is to literalize, objectify, or reify the pointing finger of “turn the light around” and look to an “inside” compared to the “outside.”  There is nothing wrong with this, except that we then create objectifications of “inside” and erroneously call our subjectivity our “inside” and vice versa.  This is why people mistake Buddhism as a kind of “subjective idealism” when we speak of mind, because they think Buddhism uses the term ‘mind” to mean subjectivity, when that is not the case at all.  

In the Buddhist context, the phrase “turn the light around” means to become free of that fundamental bifurcation of making reality into two sides: the objective-subjective or external-internal.  To turn the light around doesn’t mean to turn the light from the objective to the subjective, or to turn the light from the external to the internal; it means to turn the light around from our own deepest mental activity of dividing reality into an objective realm verses a subjective realm, or an external world opposed to internal world. We are taking a backward step that steps back from our instinctive need to polarize and reify our dualistic imagination.  When we are able to turn the light of our awareness around from our habitual bifurcation process, our awareness penetrates or “sees through” that veil created by this deepest polarizing activity of our own mind to awaken to, witness, and confirm with our own realization the unity throughout the root, branches, twigs, and leaves of the living universe of awareness.

Let the Student Beware: There Are Different Degrees of Awakening.

Often Zen students, and even some Zen teachers, are confused about the Japanese terms kensho, "to see the nature" (Japanese けんしょう ; Chinese 見性 jianxing) and satori, "to awaken" or "awakening" (Japanese さとり; Chinese 悟 wu), and assume that the terms describe enlightenment as if there is only one kind of enlightenment.  In this way, some students may project onto the teacher the idea that because the teacher has experienced an awakening that is called kensho or satori therefore the teacher is fully enlightened and in some manner omniscient or infallible. This is a grave error on the part of the student, and if the teacher encourages such projections, then the teacher is putting the student into a straight jacket and chains.

 
In Buddhism (i.e., the Buddha Dharma), the Sanskrit term for the full enlightenment of the historical Buddha is anuttara-samyak-sambodhi (variously translated into Chinese as 阿耨多羅三藐三菩提;, 無上正等正覺, etc.).  Leading all beings to realize for ourselves this awakening is the goal or aim of every Buddha manifesting in every world. In discussing the Buddha's awakening, confusion arises when people misunderstand primary aspects of awakening: (1) that awakening is essential and indispensable to the path of the Buddha, (2) that awakening is sudden and immediate in that it transcends temporal-spatial perspectives, (3) that from a temporal-spatial perspective cultivation of the path takes place both before and after awakening, and (4) that there are different degrees of awakening. Here I want to mainly address the fourth point, that there are different degrees of awakening, with some comment about how the fourth point relates to the other three points.

The term anuttara-samyak-sambodhi reveals within itself four basic degrees of enlightenment:

(1)   bodhi: enlightenment, awakening, realization, etc.

(2)   sambodhi:  the “equal” or “altogether” enlightenment.

(3)   samyak-sambodhi: “unified” or “aligned” altogether enlightenment.

(4)   anuttara-samyak-sambodhi: “unsurpassed” or “unexcelled” aligned altogether enlightenment, also called the unexcelled completely perfect enlightenment.

Because there are these distinguishable degrees of awakening, Zen Master Hakuin related stories of his own multiple great satoris as well as many minor satoris.   The traditional depictions of training stages such as the Eight Jhanas, the 10 Bodhisattva Bhumis (Stations) or the 10 Ox Herding Pictures depict variations of the steps of cultivation both before and after awakening.
 
When we talk about step-by-step cultivation before awakening, we are talking about learning of and opening our mind to the possibility of awakening, developing our faith and confidence in awakening as a real experience, and taking the steps necessary to realizing awakening in our actual life. However, no matter how much we may wish it were so, there is no plain and simple formula for this step-by-step cultivation that is like a step-by-step process for learning to crochet or drive a car.  Because awakening is essentially an unraveling of or seeing through our delusions and bifurcated false conceptualizations, and because our delusions and bifurcated conceptualizations have both a social and individual component, the general formulations of the step-by-step cultivation before awakening can only address those socially shared aspects of our ignorance with the final unraveling of our individual delusions and illusions occurring in an unformulated process. That is why Zen teacher Robert Aitken would say enlightenment happens as if by accident, but that our training makes us accident prone.

When we talk about step-by-step cultivation after awakening we are talking about the realization of the different degrees of awakening from initial bodhi to fully matured and complete anuttara-samyak-sambodhi.  In Zen, the system known as Dongshan’s Five Positions (A.K.A., Tozan’s Five Ranks) is one such description of cultivation after initial awakening.

A Zen student should practice with a teacher who has at least an initial awakening kensho, and this is essential. A student may practice with another student who has not “seen the nature” but should not consider that fellow practitioner in the way as their teacher.  Students should only look to someone with a modicum of awakening, whether called kensho or satori, at their teacher.  However, students should not be deceived (by themselves or another) into thinking that all awakenings are equal and fungible or that training after initial enlightenment is unnecessary. This is why Zen Master Torei said:

Look! Why did the Buddha kindly, clearly, and in detail point out for you the stages of the Way? All of them are means to advance and progress in true training after Satori – the skillful means of no means, the grades of no grade. The same holds true for Tozan’s ‘Five Ranks’, for Rinzai’s ‘Four Positions of Person and Circumstance’, and his ‘Four Positions of Guest and Host’. All are stages after Satori. (From Yoko Okuda’s translation of The Discourse on The Inexhaustible Lamp of the Zen School by Zen Master Torei Enji.)

The words of the Buddhist scriptures and the Zen ancestors are the superbly skillful means of measuring the degree of our awakening.  To read the Sutras is to check our own understanding against the words of the Buddha, and if there is anything that we do not understand or comprehend, then that is the measure of the shallowness or depth of our own degree of awakening. This is why Torei said:

So as to test the Dharma-Gates you have attained to, you have to check them against the Buddha's Sutras and the Treatises (Shastras), and study these again and again in detail and with insight. Always ask yourselves whether what you have attained tallies with what is said in the Sutras and Treatises.

 

The Joy of Awakening

Someone asked:

I see the trees bend. I feel the sun. I hear the birds sing. I see my daughter skip before me. I feel joy in the moment. But is that joy illusory; transient and born of the cravings of the self, or is it zen itself, the illusion stripped away and the universe revealed?
I struggle with this simple question.

My reply: 

Great simple question, that because of its very simplicity, will evoke very different and contradictory responses!

The word "joy" can refer to selfish illusions or the true nature of the universe revealed.

The Sutra of Queen Srimala's Lion's Roar says joy is one of the paramitas of the Dharmakaya. So there is nothing wrong with joy. By a paramita of the Dharmakaya is meant that joy can carry us over to the other shore of the true suchness of the Dharmakaya.

But of course we can have illusions of and about joy just like we can have illusions about everything based on our antithetical polarized conceptions.

To struggle with this question is an example of the natural arising of a koan of life (genjo koan).  Keep the "don't know" of inquiring doubt alongside the faith in joy as a manifestation of suchness and resolve the apparent dilemma on your own with the struggle of determined practice.


Someone else responded to the first question with:

Joy and happiness and suffering are all things that change.
The saying goes, "This too shall pass." Transient.
Born of greed, hatred, ignorance.


To which I replied:

This presumes the definition of "joy" as something belonging on the list of all things that change. Joy is definitely not something born of the three poisons of greed, hatred, and ignorance, so it doesn't belong on the list.

Actually, joy never changes, it is only our thoughts about joy that change.  The never beginning and never ending continual radiation of the joy of the Dharmakaya is like the light of the sun always shining but being obscured by clouds or by the rotation of the earth.

When we see the trees bending in the wind, the beauty of the flowers, or the zest of the children and these bring us joy, that joy is the joy of the Dharmakaya manifesting.  If we mistake that joy as being dependent on the trees, the flowers, and the children, then we are mistaking joy for something that is impermanent and changing because we are confusing true and genuine joy with the object that is associated with arousing our recollection of the joy of awakening!  That confusion is what is born by the three poisons, not the joy.

_/|\_

Updated translation of Bodhidharma's Outline

Here's my recently updated translation of Bothidharma's Outline for Discerning the Mahayana and Entering the Way which is the document that is considered to be the most likely extant written example of Bodhidharma's teaching.  Bodhiharma was The Twenty-Eighth Ancestral Founder of the  Ekayana Lineage of Southern India and The First Ancestral Founder of the Zen Lineage of China.

 

 

 

Great Master Bodhidharma’s Outline

For Discerning the Mahayana and Entering the Way

By Four Practices and Contemplation

菩提達磨大師略辨大乘入道四行觀

 

By Bodhidharma, (d. circa 532)

Translated by Gregory Wonderwheel ©  2008/2012

            Man enters the Way by many roads. But in summary we speak of not going beyond two kinds of cultivating. The first is entering by principle.  The second is entering by practice.

            That which is "entering by principle" designates reliance on the lineage of awakening to bear profound faith that the one true nature of beings is the same.  However, as a traveler is concealed in the dusts of delusion, it has been unable to manifest.  Even so, if one renounces the false, returns to the true, firmly abides in wall contemplation--without self and without other, with the ordinary and the sacred one and the same--solidly abides in the immovable, and furthermore, does not depend on written teachings, then one immediately takes part in a deep accord with principle without having discriminations. Being peaceful in this way is non-doing (wuwei) and has the name of "entering by principle."

            "Entering by practice" designates four practices, and of those remaining various practices, in all cases one enters within these [four]. What are the four classes?  First, the practice of retribution for wrongs. Second, the practice of according with conditioned causes. Third, the practice of nothing to seek.  Fourth, the practice of corresponding to Dharma.  What can be said?

            “The practice of retribution for wrongs” designates a person who is practicing cultivating the Way. If at the time of receiving suffering, we face ourselves and recall the words, “I’ve gone through past innumerable aeons (kalpas) abandoning the root and following the tips, existing in the various currents and waves, hating the many arising wrongs, and disregarding harms without limit.   Now, although I'm without offenses, indeed my former misfortunes have ripened as the fruit of evil karma, and neither heavenly beings (devas) nor humans are actually able to see where they are given out.  With a willing mind I willingly receive it, all without complaint of wrongs.”  A Sutra says, “On running into suffering do not grieve,"  Because how can you use it?  Because consciousness transcends it.  At the time this is born in the mind you take part in agreement with principle. In their essence, wrongs are progress in the Way. Therefore I articulate the words, "the practice of retribution for wrongs”

            Second, is that which is "the practice of according with conditioned causes."   The multitude of beings are without self and are unified with the karma of the conditioned causes that turn them.  Suffering and joy are received together, and in every case follow the conditioned causes of beings.  If we are able to win the rewards of honor and rank in affairs, it is our previous left over causes that are perceived.  Now in this manner the gains of our conditioned causes are exhausted, and there is no going back.  What then do we have of happiness?  While gain and loss follow conditioned causes, the mind is without increase or decrease.  The winds of joy do not stir the deep smooth flowing in the Way.   This is therefore the articulation of the words "the practice of according with conditioned causes."

            Third, is that which is "the practice of nothing to seek."  Worldly people, so long in confusion, desire attachments everywhere. It goes by the name of seeking.  Someone who is wise awakens to the truth, and principle will then flip-flop with the customary.  With the non-doing of the tranquil mind, forms follow the turns of fortune.  The myriad existences are thus empty, and the resolve for nothing is joy. Virtuous merit and darkness always follow and chase each other. As long dwelling in the Three Realms is like a house on fire, having a body in all cases is suffering. Who gains peace accordingly?  Completely reaching this point one therefore renounces the various existences and stops conceptualizations to have nothing to seek.  The sutra says, "If there is seeking, everyone suffers. If there is no seeking, then joy."  To discern and comprehend without seeking is a true act of the practice of the Way.  Therefore the words, "the practice of nothing to seek."

            Fourth, is that which is "the practice of corresponding to Dharma."  The Dharma is the activity of seeing the principle of the purity of the nature.  By this principle the multitude of characteristics are thus empty, without taint, without attachment, without this, and without that. The sutra says, “In the Dharma there is no multitude of beings, because it is free from the defilements of the multitude of beings.  In the Dharma there is no existing self, because it is free from the defilements of a self."  If those who are wise are able to have faith in and expound this principle, then they are necessarily corresponding to Dharma and practicing accordingly.  In the essence of the Dharma there is no stinginess. By the almsgiving (dana) charity of the practice of body, life, and wealth the mind is without parsimony, and one escapes and releases the three-fold emptiness [of giver, gift, and receiver].  When one is not dependent and is not attached,  and only acts to leave defilements, one corresponds to converting the multitude of beings yet does not grasp at appearances. This is practicing for oneself to repeatedly be able to benefit others, and likewise be able to dignify the Way of Enlightenment.  Since [the Paramita of] Almsgiving (dana) is like this,  the remaining Five [Paramitas] are likewise just so.  For eliminating delusions, one cultivates and practices the Six Paramitas, yet nothing is practiced.  This is doing "the practice of corresponding to Dharma."

The end of Great Master Dharma's "Four Practices and Contemplation"

Who Determines What Buddha Dharma Is?

A person asked, "Who determines what Buddha Dharma is?

I responded:

As Donovan sang the haiku:

"The lock upon my garden gate,
a snail,
that's what it is."

A person then asked

So if everyone can determine what Buddhism is ... then how do we know which is the real one??
They can contradict each other even when they are trying to say the same thing.
Can a layman give advice on meditation? Or should it be a respected teacher?
Would the advice be the same or would it be so vastly different??
Who do we trust for the correct information??

This is a great question.  Now I ask, how can you tell whether the lock on the gate is a lock or a snail? You have to see, touch, work the function of the lock, etc.   This is not as simple as it may seem.  If one thinks this is a  simple matter theo one is missing the profound meaning of Zen.

We've gone over this question many times, and will continue to do so in the next 2500 years of Zen. Why? Because the interplay of delusion and awakening is unborn and undying.

So, is it a lock or a snail? 

Wŏnhyo (元曉 617-686) was the great Korean master who espoused and popularized the Buddhist ecumenical syncretism of the Ekayana (One Vehicle) based primarily on the [i]Flower Garland Sutra [/i](Avatamsaka, Huayan) and the [i]Treatise on the Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana[/i].  As the legend of Wonhyo's great awakening goes, it came when he was traveling from Korea to China to meet with the great masters of the Tang to ask exactly this sort of question about determining the basis of Buddha Dharma.  He specifically wanted to study the new translations by Xuanzang of the Yogacara sutras and shastras.  When he and his close friend and travelling companion arrived at the seaport they discovered their ship had been delayed by bad weather and they themselves had no place to stay as the storm was hitting the town. They found a cave in the dark and got out of the rain but became very thirsty. They groped in the dark and discovered gourd bowls filling with rainwater. They drank and their thirst was greatfully quenched and they slept peacefully. However, in the light of morning they discovered they had slept in a roadside tomb and that their bowls were actually skull caps and what they took for fresh rain water was the water collected in the skulls that still had bits of brain and flesh attached. Due to the storm they had to stay there a second night and again became thirsty.  Remembering his thirst quenched from the night before, Wonhyo attempted to drink from the same bowl but this time he reched in the attempt, and his sleep was disturbed by ghosts and nightmares.  As he pondered the difference between the two nights' experiences he had a great awakening to the meaning of mind-only (心量) knew the answer to the question "Who determines what is Buddha Dharma?"  Wonhyo composed a comemorative verse:

心生故種種法生,
心滅故龕墳不二

My translation:
“Because of the birth of mind,  every kind of thing is born;,
because of the extinguishing of mind, a shrine room and a tomb are not two.”

[There are several puns here in addition to describing his experience: first, the word 龕 for “shrine-room” or “stupa room” has the secondary meaning “to win, be victorious,” so “winning and the tomb (i.e., losing in death)” are not two; second the shrine-room when it is a stupa room is a place for the veneration of Buddha reclics and the regular tomb is the place for the corpses of common people, thus the meaning that the resting place of the Buddha and of common people are not two, i.e., the inherent nature of Buddhas and common people are not two.]

After this awakening, Wonhyo decided he no longer needed to vist "the Great Tang" and he returned home.

Likewise, the lock and the snail are not two.

Here's another story in the same vein:

Once there was a monk who specialized in the Buddhist precepts, and he kept to them all his life. Once when he was walking at night, he stepped on something. It made a squishing sound, and he imagined he had stepped on an egg-bearing frog. This caused him no end of alarm and regret, in view of the Buddhist precept against taking life, and when he finally went to sleep that night he dreamed that hundreds of frogs came demanding his life. The monk was terribly upset, but when morning came he looked and found that what he stepped on was a overripe eggplant. At that moment his feeling of uncertainty suddenly stopped, and for the first time he realized the meaning of the saying that there is no objective world. Then he finally knew how to practice Zen.
~ From the book: Zen Essence

The deeper we identify with the question, the more certain it is that no amount of thinking will resolve this question.  Only a direct experience that shows us the actual living meaning of the Diamond Sutra's admonition to "see all the world as a dream" and the Lankavatara Sutra's teaching that "everything is a discrimination of mind" can resolve this question to our heart's satisfaction.

_/|\_
Gregory

The Ten Stages of Awakening

Here's a table of comparison between three early models of the Ten Stages of Awakening.  We don't know how much cross reference there is between them.  The 10 Bodhisattva Stages from the Avatamsaka Sutra are the earliest. Zongmi obviously read the Avatamsaka Sutra and was extremely well versed in it but did not adopt it's model of 10 stages verbatim and instead used the famous "Discourse on the Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana" as his template for the 10 levels of awakening.  The 10 Oxherding pictures have had several versions and I'm using here one of the later versions.  I've never herd a solid story about how the 10 Oxherding Pictures developed, but I have seen an earlier version that came from India using an elephant rather than an ox.

 The fourth column is my own version of the 10 stages in terms of the functioning of the Eight Consciousnesses and the well know association of the transformation of the Eight Consciousnesses into the Four Wisdoms that have been described in Zen since Huineng in the beginning of the 8th century.

	Zongmi’s 10 Levels of Awakening	10 Ox Herding Pictures	10 Bodhisattva Stages (bhūmi)	My View of the 10 Stages In Terms of the Eight Consciousnesses and Five Ranks
1	Awakening of Faith in One’s Own Suchness and the Three Jewels	Searching for the Ox	the Very Joyous. (Skt. Paramudita), in which one rejoices at realizing a partial aspect of the truth;	After years of wandering in the weeds and woods Awareness feels the intimations of the 8th Consciousness and begins to seek its own source.
2	Resolving to Attain Awakening by Generating Compassion, Wisdom and Vows	Seeing the Footprints	the Stainless. (Skt. Vimala), in which one is free from all defilement;	Awareness begins to turn around from enchantment with the 10,000 things of the 1st to 6th Consciousnesses and to investigate their images as reflected in the 7th Consciousness
3	Cultivating the Five Gates  to Make the Root of Faith Grow (i.e., the Five Paramitas with the fifth being samatha-vipassayna combined)	Seeing the Ox	the Luminous. (Skt. Prabhakari), in which one radiates the light of wisdom;	Peeking through the veil of the  7th Consciousness, Awareness becomes certain of the 8th Consciousness and begins releasing its fixed grip on the 1st to 5th Consciousnesses
4	Arising of Great Bodhicitta	Getting the Ox	the Radiant. (Skt. Archishmati), in which the radiant flame of wisdom burns away earthly desires;	Awareness fully lets go of grasping at the 1st to 5th Consciousnesses and begins to release its grip on the 6th Cons.  to flow through the 7th Consciousness into the 8th Consciousness
5	Overcoming the Six Afflictions and Seeing Self is empty.	Herding the Ox	the Difficult to Cultivate. (Skt. Sudurjaya), in which one surmounts the illusions of darkness, or ignorance as the Middle Way;	Awareness Having Let Go of all attachment to the 6th Consciousness passes through the Veil of the 7th Consciousness to enter the 8th Consciousness
6	Flowing in the Practice of the Six Perfections (the Six Paramitas with 5 and 6 being Dhyana and Prajna) Self and Dharmas both empty, eternally void eternally like an illusion.	Riding the Ox Home	the Manifest. (Skt. Abhimukhi) in which supreme wisdom begins to manifest;	Awareness Having let go of all attachment to the 7th Consciousness and fully returned to the 8th Cons., the 8th Cons. Transforms into the Great Mirror Wisdom
7	Mastery Over Forms, Everything in Fusion, All Arises From Discrimination of One’s Own Mind	Forgetting the Ox, the Person Resting	the Gone Afar. (Skt. Duramgama), in which one rises above the states of the Two vehicles;	Awareness arising through the Great Mirror Wisdom Transforms the 7th Consciousness into the Equality Wisdom
8	Mastery Over Mind, Nothing That is Not Illuminated	Person and Ox Both Forgotten	the Immovable. (Skt. Achala), in which one dwells firmly in the truth of the Middle Way and cannot be perturbed by anything;	Awareness arising through the Equality Wisdom Transforms the 6th Consciousness into the All Observing Wisdom
9	Free From Thoughts Cultivating No-thought, Awakened to the Origin of Delusion & So Full of Teaching Devices	Returning to the Source	the Good Intelligence. (Skt. Sadhumati), in which one preaches the Law freely and without restriction;	Awareness arising through the All Observing Wisdom Transforms the 1st to 5th Consciousnesses into the All Performing Wisdom
10	There is One Awakening With Limitless Responsive Functioning in the Constantly Abiding Dharma Realm, Seeing All Beings Attaining Perfect Awakening	Returning to the Marketplace With Helping Hands	the Cloud of Dharma. (Skt. Dharmamegha), in which one benefits all sentient beings with the Law (Dharma), just as a cloud sends down rain impartially on all things.	Awareness Blossoms in Full Awakening and Mutual Integration of the Four Wisdoms